


The King's Witch

by DictionaryWrites



Category: Marvel
Genre: Arthurian, Complicated Relationships, Dark, Disturbing Themes, Dubious Consent, Fantasy, High Fantasy, M/M, Magic-Users, Magical Realism, Plot, Power Dynamics
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-21
Updated: 2018-11-04
Packaged: 2019-06-14 01:20:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15377565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DictionaryWrites/pseuds/DictionaryWrites
Summary: As a child, Steve Rogers was on the very verge of death, sickly and plagued by illness. Healed by a sorcerer named Stephen Strange, but forced to hide his magical improvements due to the outlaw of magic throughout the realm of Libertas, his aim is to become a knight, as his father before him.Why is it, he wonders, that he cannot tear his gaze away from Loki, the king's physician? What is it about him, Steve wonders, that chills his very heart?





	1. The Witch In Thorston

The first time Steve meets Loki, he has just passed his thirteenth summer.

Not three months previous, he and his mother had left the old village Steve had grown up in behind them, and they had taken up lodgings in the village surrounding the palace of Libertas’ capital, Astrum, ruled over by King Alexander II. The life in town is bustling and loud, and Steve almost finds himself, one morning, asking why his mother had never brought them here previously – until he realises, with a sick punch to the chest, that town life would have killed him, before the ritual.

And Mom… She’s getting sicker as the days go by. Steve can see the hollows beneath her eyes growing darker and more pronounced, see her lips growing more chapped and dry, the skin flaking away unhealthily, and her eyes are losing their spark.

She will die, soon, and Steve will keep on living.

They live in a small cottage apart from the larger, more crowded homesteads that settle along the city’s dirt road, with enough space to grow a small plot of their own vegetables – Steve hears his father’s name spoken over his head as he moves through the market towns, and he is vaguely aware that once, his father was a knight here in Astrum, and that money has been laid aside for them, and the cottage itself…

Steve doesn’t like charity. Doesn’t like to be given stuff he doesn’t deserve.

He’ll pay it back. He’ll pay everything back.

When he comes into the main room of the cottage, apart from their small, shared bedroom, he finds his mother carefully packing a satchel with bread and skeins of water, as well as cheese wrapped in cloth, and apples. “Where are we going?” Steve asks.

“It’s a long journey,” Mom says quietly. “It will take us today to get there, and tomorrow to get back.”

It isn’t an answer, but Steve doesn’t push it, and he takes the pack from her, sliding the strap over his shoulder. Steve is much stronger than he was before the ritual – he’d been a damned sickly kid, had barely pulled through two different fever-sicknesses, and yet now he’s gaining muscle by the day, putting on weight, growing up _tall_ —

He’s much taller than Mom, now. Instead of pride, he feels mild nausea.

They keep to a slow pace, enough to allow Mom to keep her breaths coming out regularly, but even at the snail’s pace they’re working with, Steve can see the fatigue is wearing her thin. They leave the city walls of Astrum, showing the cloth insignia of his father’s coat of arms, a star amidst two stripes, and then they walk out into the woods.

They take a break when the sun is high in the sky, the heat cloying and settling heavy on their skin.

“Where are we going, Mom?” Steve asks softly. Mom closes her eyes tightly, just for a moment, and she twists her mouth. “Mom, you… You can’t keep secrets from me forever.” Sighing, she nods her head. He hadn’t known what they were doing, when Bucky had taken him, feverish with a flop sweat and barely conscious, out of the village they’d grown up in, taken him to the centre of a grassy clearing, where a man in a red cloak had been waiting.

_(“You understand the price, I hope?”_

_“Of course we do,”_ Buck had said – Steve had heard that clearly, through the haze of his fever. Where is he now, Steve wonders? Where is Bucky? _“Sir Joseph will get you the artefact, Strange. Just heal him, please!”)_

“You have to promise me that you’ll never trust him,” Mom says softly, desperately. “The man that healed you, this is… He told us it was best to move away from the village, because people would notice, you know, how different you were. They would suspect what it was that healed you.”

 _Magic_ , Steve wants to say, but he doesn’t. It isn’t the sort of word one says aloud.

“Who is he?” Steve asks.

“You must _never_ trust him,” Mom says again, with urgency shining in her fading eyes.

“I won’t,” Steve promises.

They start to walk again.

Loki, Mom tells him, lives twenty miles out from the Palace of Libertas. He lives alone, and he is… _A witch_ , she doesn’t say. _A wizard,_ she doesn’t say either. She just trails off every time, leaving the sentence incomplete. He and Strange aren’t friends, but none of these people are really friends with one another – they know each other, and that’s enough.

The sun is beginning to come down toward the horizon as they enter the small hamlet she’d been given directions to. They duck into a tavern, which is awash with people, and when Mom asks in a hushed voice for directions to the house of Loki Bölson, people turn their heads in curiosity, but nobody looks angry, or scared. No one knows, then, what Loki is.

“Thank you,” Mom says, and they walk for forty minutes more.

Loki Bölson lives in a windmill.

Steve looks up at its high tower as they come closer, seeing its regularly turning blades, where white cloth is pulled taut over frames of wood. Chickens mill about their feet as they come closer, and a goat with a silver bell around its neck comes right up to Steve, butting its hard head gently against his thigh. He pats it gently, feeling its warmth and its coarse hair under his palm.

The sun has slipped some of the way beneath the horizon, and the sky is a haze of peaches and oranges – it is because of this, Steve suspects (or maybe it is simply magic he doesn’t know the name of), that Loki looks so ethereally beautiful as he passes over the hill. Holding a basket of green leaves ( _wild garlic_ , Steve’s newly-sensitive nose tells him) beneath his arm, Loki gracefully passes over a stile, and then he stops, glancing between the two of them.

Loki is tall, broad-shouldered with narrow hips, and he wears a loose, blue blouse that is tucked carefully into riding breeches, his black leather boots coming up to his upper calf. A silver chain shines around his throat, its pendant hidden beneath fabric of the shirt, and through his ear is a bar of silver, mimicking the shining pieces that strike through his left nostril and the lower right part of his lip. His long hair is loose around his shoulders, and although he doesn’t braid it, Steve can see a few other accents of silver amidst his hair, catching the evening light. He’s Asgardian, originally, then – Libertans don’t wear their hair loose like that unless they’re nobility, and even the Genoshans don’t pierce anything other than their ears.

The evening light gives Loki’s pale skin a warm, healthy glow, and Steve stares at the shine of his blue eyes and the pinkness of his thin lips. He’s _beautiful_ , and Steve imagines that he can feel the power of Loki’s magic on the air.

“Sarah, isn’t it?” he asks softly, addressing Mom, and not Steve. His voice is low and deep, full of a sonorous quality that makes it vibrate on the air. “I wasn’t expecting you until tomorrow morning.”

“The sun hasn’t set yet, so I thought better today,” Mom says, anxiously. “I brought you some cheese, as well as the coin.” Loki’s lips quirk into a very small smile.

“I don’t eat cheese,” he says, but then he inclines his head slightly. He has the bearing of a noble or an academic, his back straight, his movements quietly graceful, and just watching him Steve feels his mouth dry out slightly. Of all the things the ritual could cure – his blurry vision, his ailing hearing, his sickly lungs and hacking cough, there was one twist of his person that remained unfixed, unfaltering, and that is Steve’s perverse desire for other men. “Come inside. You must be very tired, after such a journey.”

Loki leans, catching a small lever that comes from a stone outcrop from the grassy ground, and momentarily, the windmill stops its rotation. Walking forward, his hips taking a neat sway from one side to the other, he takes a key from his pocket and unlocks the door to the windmill, taking a step inside. There is a _hiss_ of something, and then Steve sees the flicker of flames within.

He doesn’t move until his Mom walks in first, and they step inside Loki’s windmill. As Steve closes the door behind him, the windmill’s blades begin to turn again, and Steve knows that the lever is nothing more than a decoy, a made-up mechanism to distract from the magic that Loki had used to freeze the shift of the blades.

 _You must never trust him_ , he thinks, and he turns to look around the room. He had expected to see a grindstone for flour, but there is none: they stand in a wide, round room with a hearth at its centre, crackling with warm, inviting flame. Although the heat is balmy outside, the cold stone in here negates the warmth of the fire, leaving it a comfortable temperature. Loki sets his basket aside, onto a wooden table, and he moves forward, taking Mom’s hand.

Steve watches as Loki gently leads her to a comfortable-looking wooden chair, pushing her to sit down, and Mom does, sinking onto the embroidered cushion that rests on the chair’s seat with no small amount of relief.

“Thank you,” she says softly, but Steve can see the distrust in her eyes, and judging by Loki’s politely distant demeanour, he can too.

“Water, I think,” he murmurs, and he takes up a jug from the table, pouring it into a carefully carved, wooden beaker. Pushing it into Mom’s hands, he turns to pour another, and he holds it out to Steve.

There are scars on Loki’s hand – a savage bite mark from some kind of wolf or dog has ripped through the flesh on his palm and on the back of his hand, but Steve can also see callouses and liquid spatters, burn marks and old cuts. At his wrists, Steve can see the beginnings of more scars, but his shirt sleeves hide the worst of them. Steve takes the cup, drinking gratefully, and he watches as Loki pulls on a loose robe over his light clothes, drawing its string tight over his belly. The robe is not like the ones Strange had worn, carefully embroidered and shining in gold: it is plain, forest green, and the only sign of its magic is the way it settles on Loki’s hips and shoulders like it has been woven of liquid, hugging the natural curves of his body.

Loki is examining him, Steve realises. He sees the way the blue eyes move slowly over Steve’s body, taking in the shift of his new muscles beneath his too-tight clothes that are growing too small to fit him ( _a new problem, one he’s never had before)_ , seeming to make a catalogue of Steve’s limbs, the shape of his body, even the shape of his face. Steve straightens his back, his chin raising, his hands at his sides—

This makes Loki laugh. It is only a quiet thing, a little exhalation that punches from his nostrils, but Steve feels himself smile all the same.

“Stephen Strange tells me he used an old Midgardian ritual to heal your boy’s ailments, using the movements of the spring and summer sun… You look hale, child, and hearty.”

“He said,” Mom says softly, and she bites her lip. She would stand, Steve thinks, if she was strong enough to. “He said we should always keep an eye on it, just in case – that old magic is unpredictable.”

“It is not unpredictable,” Loki murmurs, arching a sardonic eyebrow. “Merely that it follows ancient laws, laid out long before Strange was born. But he is quite correct, if you ever suffer with something you cannot explain, you ought call for me. May I?” Loki extends a hand to Steve, but his glance is turned to Mom, as if Steve isn’t almost his own man, as if he isn’t _grown_.

Hesitantly, Mom nods, and Loki takes a few steps forward. Loki’s tall form seems even taller when it invades Steve’s space, but Steve keeps himself very still. Loki’s hands touch gently against the sides of his jaw, and Steve flinches.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Loki murmurs softly, his tone deeply apologetic. “My hands are very cold.”

“They’re like stone,” Steve says, staring at Loki’s chest to keep from looking at the older man’s face, but this is a mistake, he thinks. Staring at Loki’s chest means that he can see the graceful column of his marble throat, see the hollow at its base, even see the rise and fall of his chest…

Magic tingles over Steve’s chest, the sensation indescribable and inescapable, and he closes his eyes tightly as he feels it explore him, feels it rush through his organs and over his skin, but within a second, it is done. Loki draws back his hands, and Steve can feel the freezing ghost of his fingertips on his chin and his cheeks.

“What is that?”

“A blessing,” Loki says softly. “Just a spell to keep you safe.” Loki takes an artful step back, his scarred hands loosely clasped before his belly. Strange had had scars on his hands, but those had been different – Strange’s hands had shook with the weight of the old injuries, and even holding a cup had proved difficult for him without concentration. Loki’s hands are muscled and strong, steady even when magic doesn’t flow through them. “I will accompany to the tavern in town, if you wish, but I have lodgings here, which I believe might be better for you.”

“Oh, we couldn’t possibly,” Mom says hurriedly.

“Of course you can,” Loki says smoothly. “Even if I cannot eat the cheese you have brought me, Sarah Rogers, I should repay the thought in kind. Let us put young Steven here to bed, and you and I will talk.”

“I don’t want to leave,” Steve says. “I’m nearly a man now.” Loki looks at him, and his eyes seem impossibly old for a second.

“Nearly. But not yet,” he decides.

“Stevie,” Mom says softly. “Bed.” Frustration burns inside him, but Steve can’t argue with her. Loki leads him to a stairwell, and Steve climbs the steep, stone steps until he is in another circular room. There are six cots around the edges of the room, with four more laid out with four points in the centre of the room, each with a knitted blanket laid at their foot, with straw mattresses and wooden frames.

What is this? An infirmary?

Sighing, Steve slides into one of the beds, and puts his head down to sleep.

❅ ✪ ❅ ✪ ❅ ✪ ❅

The next morning, Steve finds his mother asleep on a thick, cushioned bench in the lower room, fast asleep. A blanket of thickly corded, green wool has been drawn over her shoulders, and her chest doesn’t rise and fall as evenly as it should, sometimes stuttering on the inhalation where her lungs crackle.

“I didn’t wish for her to climb those steep stairs, you see,” Loki says softly. Steve whips around to look at him – he hadn’t heard Loki move behind him. He looks at Loki’s wine-coloured blouse, covered over with a light, leather vest, and at his tight breeches. There are so tight that Steve can see the fat, generous curve to the sorcerer’s flank, the way his thighs and backside fill out more of the breeches than perhaps they ought. “Walk with me, Steven. I must attend to the animals.”

They move out from the windmill, and Steve watches as Loki drops seed amidst the clucking, delighted chickens, before filling the water trough. Then, he takes up a bushel of hay, laying it out for the single nanny goat, before leading Steve to another stable. The horse within is a mare, a deep, rich brown colouring her coat.

“This is Sida,” Loki murmurs, setting more hay out for her.

“Why do you have a goat, if you don’t eat cheese?” Steve asks. “I assume you don’t drink milk either.”

“I can’t,” Loki agrees simply, beginning to draw a brush over Sida’s fine, brown hair. “It would make me very ill.”

“Why have a goat then?”

“Often, I have patients staying in the infirmary upstairs,” Loki answers, patting Sida’s flank. “Goat’s milk has much of the same goodness, but less richness than cow’s milk, and is easier to keep down on an unsettled stomach.” Steve crosses his arms tightly over his chest, watching the older man. “You wish to know what your mother and I spoke of last night – I understand. I will tell you, if you ask.”

That makes Steve falter. “Really?”

“We all wish to protect our children, one way or another,” Loki says softly. He says it as if it’s from experience. “It isn’t always possible. Your mother is trying to protect you, but it is no skin off my back if you choose to supersede it.” Steve feels something twist in his chest, but Loki speaks almost casually, as if it doesn’t matter to him at all what Steve will say next.

“Did we really come here just so that you could do that blessing on me?”

“No,” Loki answers cleanly. “Your mother was hoping I would be able to heal her ills, so that she does not leave you an orphan this winter.” Steve feels tears sting at his eyes as he thinks of his mother’s quietly crackling chest. Equally, he thinks of his father’s grave, left behind them in the village he’d grown up in, where his father had died from an injury after getting the stone Strange had asked of him in return for Steve’s life.

“You couldn’t?” Loki slowly shakes his head.

“Magic is not unlimited,” he says softly. He says it like he is grieving the fact. “It cannot do everything, and it never comes without its price. My condolences.”

“Fine,” Steve mutters.

They leave before the sun is fully above the horizon, and Steve doesn’t look back.

❅ ✪ ❅ ✪ ❅ ✪ ❅

Steve buries his mother on a cold day in August. He digs the grave alone and fills it in alone, and when it begins to rain he is grateful, for his tears mingle with the fat drops as they fall and drag over his skin, sticking his shirt to his ribs and his muscle.

The next day, he takes to the palace, kneels before the king, and requests some manner of employment – any way he might serve the throne that has allowed his mother such hospitality in her dying days.

The king accepts him.

❅ ✪ ❅ ✪ ❅ ✪ ❅

The second time they meet, Steve rides out to deliver a missive from the leader of the knights, Sir Nicholas. It is the winter of Steve’s sixteenth year, and the stallion beneath him whinnies as its hooves pound hard against the frost-covered path of the wood. Steve leans further into the saddle, gripping tightly at the reins, and he rides all the faster.

It ought be a ride of two and a half hours, maybe three – they make it in two, and Steve takes the stallion – Ashildr – to drink from the trough.

Loki’s goat comes to meet him, its bell tinkling softly, but when Steve sees there is no light on in the windmill, he walks down the hill, scanning for signs of the witch.

There are none.

Moving further down the hill, Steve comes to a small wood, and he ducks beneath the umbrella of bare branches, peering through the sea of greys and browns that make up the forest… And there he sees Loki.

Standing slowly from a half-frozen spring, he can see that Loki doesn’t so much as shiver for the cold, and his dark hair is a cascade of black around his shoulders – but not just black. At his temples and around his head, there are two or three scant strands where the black is turning silver.

And Loki…

There are such scars on him. Steve stands dumbly, the message forgotten where it hangs from his left hand, as he stares at the other man. Loki’s body is strong and muscular, but his every inch of flesh is a mess of criss-crossing scars, burning like lightning strikes across the surface of his pale flesh, raised and dark and shiny. On another man, perhaps they’d be ugly, but they only add to Loki’s dangerously inhuman air, as if weaving magic around him in a cloud.

“I’ve a message for you, sir,” Steve says hoarsely. Loki glances toward him, surprise passing over his features, but he makes no move to hide his nudity. He moves closer, his bare feet parting the frost on the grass, and he takes the missive from Steve’s hand, unfurling the scroll and reading over it. The silver chain hangs still around his neck, and Steve can see that the pendant is a kind of inverted T, the silver wrought with knotted designs… Is it an anchor?

There is something unnatural about the way Loki stands so comfortably in the freezing cold, his damp skin glistening with moisture, and Steve notices the new lines around Loki’s mouth, around his eyes.

“I thought witches weren’t supposed to age like the rest of us,” Steve says quietly. Strange had a little silver around his temples, sure, but Bucky had told Steve at the time it was because he’d started studying magic later in life, that the magic couldn’t fix what had already been done.

“They aren’t,” Loki confirms tiredly, and he passes the page back. “Give me one moment. I’ll send you back with a parcel and a reply.” Steve stares at Loki as he moves away to pick up his cloak from the side of the water, and he can see Loki’s rounded buttocks, the thighs thick with corded muscle, and… Scars. So many of them, criss-crossing like lightning over his every inch of skin.

“What are those scars from?”

“Foolishness.” As Loki pulls the cloak onto his shoulders, Steve glances down at the missive, reading through it.

_To The Sage Loki,_

_In need of a balm for torn muscles for the knights of the realm; our healer is currently with the king abroad in Genosha. Might you include a recipe for something I might make here in the castle?_

_The boy has a pouch of coin as payment._

_Yours,  
Sir Nicholas Fury_

Fury’s single eye had been intent on Steve as he’d pressed the page and the pouch into his hand alike, and when Steve had said he already knew where Loki lived, Fury had shown no surprise at all.

“Don’t you feel the cold?” Steve asks, and Loki shrugs.

“Cold is relative.” They move back up the hill, and Loki says, “My condolences, for your mother’s passing.”

“Thanks.” He doesn’t mean to sound ungrateful. Steve still mourns Mom with every day that passes, but Loki had known her no more than the others in Libertas’ capital, and the condolences ring hollow.

When they come into the yard, Ashildr comes forward, braying softly, and Steve is surprised when Loki scrambles back from him, stumbling in the dirt and falling against a standing stone etched with a calendar. He is visibly shaking as he says, sharply, “Tether your horse, Rogers.”

“Sorry,” Steve says quietly, leading Ashildr across the yard to tie his reins to a fence post, and he looks at Loki as the older man huddles in his robes, trembling now even though the cold doesn’t affect him, his breathing heavy. “I thought you rode? You can’t tell me you’re frightened of horses.”

“Mares and foals bother me not at all,” Loki mutters, a flush heavy on his cheeks, and Steve sees that the flush is not like a Midgardian’s, ruddy and red, but is instead a soft lilac.

❅ ✪ ❅ ✪ ❅ ✪ ❅

Steve drinks tea in Loki’s living quarters, watching as he sets out two jars of thick, silver ointment in a basket, then beginning to fold dried ingredients in cloth and setting them in amongst the basket as well.

“He only asked for a recipe,” Steve mutters. “You don’t need to make him a whole package.”

“It is within my best interests that the crown asks little of me,” Loki murmurs. “And when they _do_ ask anything of me, my aim is to overachieve.” He looks so tired. There are slight, grey bags under his eyes, and he drags his clever, pale fingers over the cloth parcels inside the wicker, counting them silently.

“You’re not from anywhere on Midgard,” Steve says. It isn’t a question.

“I hail from a far-off land,” Loki murmurs distractedly, taking up a set of dried mint-leaves and tying them in a square of cloth.

“Asgard?”

“No.”

“Oh.” Steve watches him, carefully. In Astrum, all kinds of people travel through – Genoshans, Wakandans, Latverians… But then others from farther away. Asgardians travel through sometimes, or Vanir. “Are you, uh… Ljoo— L’ya—” Loki glances up from the basket, and he levels Steve with a curious look, intrigue shining in his bright eyes: Steve feels his heart leap in his chest to have Loki lay his undivided attention on him.

It’s impossible not to think of Loki, once you’ve met him. Sometimes, Steve finds himself waking up in the middle of the night, remembering Loki’s cold fingers on the sides of his jaw, the tingle of his magic in Steve’s chest, despite how many years ago that had been…

“Ljósálf,” Loki supplies softly. He seems impressed with Steve, and Steve cannot help the way a little pride swells up in his chest. “Ljósálfr do not travel out this way, to the varied soils of Midgard. From whence have you taken up that word?”

“I read,” Steve says, a little defensively. “I’m permitted to read in the library, you know – I might just be a messenger, but I’m the son of a knight, and I’ll be a knight myself one day.”

“Is that so?” Loki’s lip twitches. “I am not a Ljósálf, nor a Dökkálf. I hail from a very distant realm, named Jötunheimr – you won’t find mention of it in any of your Libertan books.”

“Why not?” Steve asks.

“The Jötnar are an intensely private people. We do not usually stray from our homeland, and we allow few visitors upon our soils.” Steve frowns.

“Why did you leave?”

“I didn’t,” Loki murmurs. “I was stolen, as a child. I cannot go home, now.” Loki sighs, sweeping a red cloth over the contents of the basket and packing it tightly, then pinning another roll of parchment onto the cloth, holding it out to Steve. “Off you go, then.”

“Why can’t you go home?” Steve asks, setting the mug aside, and Loki presses his lips together, levelling Steve with an intent stare for a long few moments.

“You ask a lot of questions.”

“The ritual made me inquisitive,” Steve says. Loki laughs, the sound punching from his chest like a bark.

“The ritual has naught to do with it.” Loki reaches out, and Steve lets himself lean forward just slightly. This time, so many years later, he is ready for the coldness of Loki’s palm against his cheek, but it is not accompanied by a spark of Loki’s magic: Loki merely uses the grounding of his touch to examine Steve more closely, and then he nods his head. “My spell is as yet safely in place. Off you go, boy.”

“Will you stay out here?” Steve asks quietly. “On your own? Forever?”

“Not for much longer. But for as long as I am able,” Loki says. That makes Steve’s brow furrow, makes him want to ask something else, but Loki is shaking his head, making a shooing motion with his hands.

With no small amount of regret, Steve takes to his horse to flee.

❅ ✪ ❅ ✪ ❅ ✪ ❅

The third time Steve meets Loki, he is nineteen years old. Standing within the walls of Libertas’ great palace, he is walking past the throne-room, a pile of armour to be shined in his arms, when he hears the familiar, clipped tones of Loki’s voice, still imprinted on Steve’s memory despite the years that have passed behind them.

“You think I don’t know what you are, witch?”

“I am a healer, my lord, and I keep to myself. I left Asgard to escape magic’s foul clutches, and thus am I here, in the bounds of Libertas’ well-kept law.” Steve leans into the archway, trying to spy a glance of Loki inside. All he sees is King Alexander on the throne, staring impassively down at somebody else. Alexander Pierce is a tall man with heavy lines in his features, and it is because of him that Steve had been offered the place in the palace staff, working as a squire and a dogsbody. At least he’s no longer a messenger. “If you would rather I leave, my lord, I shall take myself to another Midgardian kingdom – perhaps Genosha.”

“Why not go there already?”

“Libertas has such beautiful, sweeping fields of golden grain, such bright forests, such wonder in its bright seas. Oft I dreamed of coming here when I was but a child.” Steve sees the king’s lip twitch slightly, and then he leans back in his seat.

“See, you think, Loki, that I’m _angry_ at you… No, no, no. You use your magic to help people, right? That’s all I want. For your magic to help me, to help the people of Asgard.” _For as long as I am able_ , Loki had said those few years back – had he known, Steve wonders, that he would one day be summoned here, before the king?

Silence rings in the throne room, and Steve _wishes_ he could see Loki’s face.

“My lord,” Loki begins reluctantly, but Alexander holds up his hand.

“Think _very_ carefully before you respond,” he says lowly, the threat plain in his voice. King Alexander has a reputation for his kindness, for his warmth and care, but Steve can’t help but wonder how different that is behind closed doors.

“I was a sorcerer in Asgard, my lord, but no longer. I can barely conjure sparks, these days, my body… There is very little I can do.” Loki’s voice is very quiet, full of shame, and Alexander, slowly, begins to smile. It’s a dark smile, and Alexander’s eyes are glittering with thought.

“But you know about magic, don’t you? You could… Advise me.” There is something quietly lascivious in Alexander’s tone, something greedy and lustful, and Steve doesn’t think he imagines the slight inhale from further in the room, from Loki.

“I— Whatever you wish, my lord. I ask only that I might keep my home in Thorston, and come to your court only when I am summoned.” Loki’s tone is quietly placating, but it is full of some desperate plea: Alexander remains unwavering.

“And how will you advise the court, if you are in Thorston?”

“I have a horse, my lord, and I ride well. I could make the ride from Thorston to here in but two hours.”

“And what if there was an emergency?” Triumph is spreading slowly across Alexander’s features, dragging at his old lips. “What if I have need of my court wizard, and he is nowhere to be found?”

“My lord, _please_ , I—”

“You know, you can flatter me all you like, but I know precisely why you won’t go to Genosha. Because they have an extradition treaty with Asgard, don’t they?” Loki remains silent. “Libertas is the only place you are safe, witch, and you’ll be safer still here in the capital.”

“I will need time,” Loki murmurs, his voice so quiet that Steve can barely hear it. “A week, at least.”

“You have three days.”

Steve rushes to meet Loki as he leaves through the double doors at the other end of the corridor, and Loki startles to see him, looking him up and down. Loki’s expression shows powerlessness and _misery_ , and Steve stares at him, unsure what to say, now that Loki is in front of him.

Loki doesn’t know what to say either, it seems – he sidesteps Steve, and he walks swiftly down the corridor, away from him.

He doesn’t look back.

❅ ✪ ❅ ✪ ❅ ✪ ❅

Steve volunteers to assist the king’s new physician unpack his belongings. It is easy work, even though Loki’s books are heavy, to take the crates up and into the small wing of the castle that has been set aside for Loki, as well as to bring Sida to the castle stables.

“Where is your goat?” Steve asks as he sets out a glass phylactery wrapped in cloth, being very gentle as he puts it on the table. The little glass vials clink against one another, and Steve traces over them, looking at the different substances within them. Dried herbs and leaves are in some of them, and in others there are shining spots of liquid.

“I left her in Thorston. The chickens too.” Loki gently sets a stack of woollen blankets on a shelf, and Steve watches him. “There are others in the village that would make use of the eggs and the milk – there is no need for me to be sentimental about such things.” Despite his words, Loki looks a little sad, his lips parted and downturned at the edges, his eyes faraway.

“Do you need help with anything else?” Loki shakes his head. Steve doesn’t yet turn on his heel to leave, instead standing still and watching Loki carefully, taking in the way he moves awkwardly around his new quarters, seeming as lost as if they were a mile wide on each side. “Why would you be worried about extradition to Asgard?” Loki’s head whips around, and he stares at Steve: he doesn’t look angry, merely surprised and uncertain.

“You oughtn’t eavesdrop,” he says lowly. “Even the son of a knight cannot escape punishment for such crimes as that.” Loki sighs, drawing his hand through his thick hair, and he presses his thin lips tightly together: the ring through his lower lip shifts as he does so, glinting in the light. “King Alexander has misconstrued my situation, and I do not feel the need to correct him.”

“What is the situation, then?” Steve asks, crossing his arms over his chest, and Loki laughs, shaking his head. When he laughs, the lines around his eyes crinkle, and draw up his thin lips further.

“So precocious,” he mutters. “You remind me—” He stops, a quiet seriousness coming to his eyes, and the smile slowly fades away from his mouth. The laughter lines and crow’s feet slowly smooth out, and for just a second Loki looks as young as he did six years ago, when he and Steve first met. “I am not wanted for crimes upon Asgard. Merely that there are those upon Asgard who would come for me, if they knew where I was. And now that I am here…” Loki spreads his scarred palms to the air, setting his jaw. “They will know soon enough. My bed is made for me: all I can do is lie in it. Such is destiny.”

“I don’t believe in destiny.”

“Don’t you?” Loki arches his dark eyebrows, looking at Steve with what appears to be genuine surprise, and he tilts his head slightly to the side. Loki is examining Steve with a strange shift to his eyes, as if he is looking around Steve’s edges instead of at Steve himself, as if peering at his shadow, or— Or his aura. His soul.

“How much magic can you really do? I heard you, in there, you said you couldn’t do anything.”

“I can’t, no. Not unless I want to withstand a lot of pain, and I… My body can’t take as much as it once could. Magic never comes without its price, Steven, and I’m afraid my own magic has rather taken its toll on me.” It’s said with a strange significance, even as Loki looks around the edges of Steve’s body, and Steve wonders if he’s thinking of the magic in Steve’s own body. Steve thinks back to the ritual he’d withstood as little more than a teenager, thinks of the symbols Strange had drawn on his body in thick, inky tar, thinks of the way he had _screamed_ as heat had burst through his skin—

Thinks of his father, dead at the hand of whatever monster had guarded the stone he’d retrieved for Strange, and thinks of his mother, buried alone in the cemetery on the castle grounds, with a modest headstone Steve had carved himself.

“Do you trust him? The king?” Steve asks. Loki’s eyes glint.

“Do you?” Steve hesitates, slowly. He trusts some people, undoubtedly – despite the man’s strange ways, he trusts the Knight Commander, Nicholas Fury; he trusts Sam Wilson, a knight-to-be like Steve himself, a squire; he trusts Natasha Romanov, a knight with bright red hair and a dark, sultry smile. The king… The king is why Steve is here, and Steve is grateful. But trust him? No. Not really.

“Of course,” he says. “He’s my king.” Loki smiles, and he reaches up, dragging his own thumb over his lower lip and looking at Steve – just for a second, just for a moment – as if Steve is the most impressive, most interesting thing he’s ever seen. He looks at Steve as if Steve is _incredible_ , and Steve doesn’t feel pride, or ego, exactly. Just that Loki seems to be looking at Steve as if Steve is all that matters, and that Steve _likes_ that. What is it about Loki, he wonders, that makes his skin hot and his heart ache in his chest? Steve’s eyes flit down to Loki’s playing thumb, seeing the way the soft skin of his lip is indented by its press, seeing the shift of the ring through his lip… “Do you?”

“No,” Loki murmurs. “I don’t trust anyone.” It strikes Steve that that’s a very lonely thing to say. But isn’t that how Loki must feel, disconnected from his homeland, and now even from the home he had in Thorston, with nothing but his horse at his side? “You should go. I’m certain you have duties to complete, Steven.”

As usual, Steve still has a thousand questions bubbling within him, but he doesn’t ask them. Instead, he nods dutifully, and he slips out of Loki’s quarters.

❅ ✪ ❅ ✪ ❅ ✪ ❅

“You know him, right?” Fury asks over the table, and Steve nods his head. The tavern is bustling, but where most of the knights are laughing and calling out dirty jokes over the crowded hall, Fury sits across from Steve and Sam, eating his stew with a quiet care. “The new physician?”

“Uh huh,” Steve says. “I was sick a lot as a kid – I told you that before. Mom wanted me to know a healer outside the castle – she figured Zola would already be super busy, you know, being the king’s physician and all, so we met with Loki when we came here, within the castle’s bounds.” Fury nods, slowly, dipping his bread into his stew and leaning in to take a bite.

“He’s a weird looking guy,” Sam murmurs. “What, is he in his fifties?”

“Hard to tell,” Steve murmurs. “He’s not a Midgardian – he’s Asgardian, I think, and they live a lot longer than Midgardians do. Like, two-hundred, three-hundred years.” Steve assumes that the Jötnar have similar lifespans to the Asgardians, anyway.

“Assuming he isn’t nobility,” Fury says mildly. Steve frowns.

“What do you mean?” Sam asks, leaning in closer, and Fury chuckles, the sound coming out rough from between his teeth.

“The nobility on Asgard eat enchanted fruits, vegetables, stuff like that – magic comes with a price no matter where it’s done, and we should be frightened of it, but they’re not scared of it like we are in Libertas. They use it constantly, and the Asgardians of the nobility… They live for a good ten thousand years, if they’re not felled on the battlefield.” Sam whistles low, and Steve thinks of the wrinkles Loki  had gained in just the few years or so between his first time meeting him and his second… Yeah, he’s pretty sure the guy isn’t going to be living for ten thousand years. “Speaking of. You two, this Sunday. I’ve cleared the proving ground, and the two of you will be showing me your mettle.”

“Really?” Steve asks. “Seriously?”

“I’m always serious,” Fury says. “This Sunday, you two start your training.” Sam nudges him in the shoulder, and Steve feels himself smile. Finally – _finally_.


	2. Training In Progress

Training for the knighthood is a long and arduous process. Even the children of nobles face the same hardship, face the same rigamarole: you train, and you train, and you train some more. After at least a year – usually two – of training, of fighting on the sparring ground, of reading and memorising the knight’s code, you go on a quest.

The quest is never easy. It’s always something huge – slaying some huge monster, besting a great general on the battlefield, breaking a curse… It’s never small. It’s never easy.

Steve can do it.

Every day, he runs in the yard, runs one way and then the other. He’s strong, stronger than Sam, and he picks everything up with ease. For weeks on weeks, he runs the laps faster, runs them over obstacles, runs them whilst doing weapon drills and dodging soft-head arrows, again and again and again…

Fury is pleased. Sam is making progress too, just slower, but Fury looks at Steve like he’s an asset the likes of which he’s never seen, and it’s… Steve’s never been looked at like that before, like he’s genuinely _valuable_ , like he could be worth putting into the field, worth putting anywhere…

He runs a lap in full-plate armour, and he doesn’t realise it isn’t meant to be easy until he sees Fury’s face, sees the wideness of his single eye, sees the set of his jaw through the slit of his helmet. Dropping clumsily to his knees he starts breathing a lot heavier, trying to get his cheeks to flush.

When he draws the helmet off his head, he is relieved to feel a drip of sweat slide down his temple, and he mumbles a clumsy word of gratitude as one of the other squires runs over to help him unbuckle the plate of his armour before he overheats. Steve feels fine, but he tries to look exhausted, and the hard look in Fury’s eye fades slightly.

Thank God.

Loki is watching him, Steve realises as he stands up, his expression quietly impassive, and Steve feels a spark of excitement in his chest – excitement, and fear. Later, Loki says sharply that he requires a squire to accompany him out into the forest, to chop down some special tree so that he can make medicine out of the bark.

Steve falls into step beside the older man, and he doesn’t think he imagines the stiffness in Loki’s jaw or the dark set of his eyes, doesn’t think he imagines the quite irritation. Steve sets his hands in his pockets, and he looks straight ahead instead of at Loki.

“I didn’t… I didn’t realise it was meant to be hard.”

“You didn’t?” Loki asks in a deceptively mild tone, but there is a hard edge to it. “You didn’t think that running at full-pelt, for the first time, in full plate weighing some fifty pounds, ought put some stress upon your person?” Steve presses his lips together, and he scowls.

“I didn’t think about it,” he mutters. There’s shame and embarrassment weighing on his shoulders, most of all because of the look on _Loki’s_ face, of complete and utter disgust.

“You _need_ to think about it,” Loki growls, baring his teeth for a second, as if he isn’t quite human – and he isn’t, is he? Steve knows that, even if he doesn’t know everything else. “You will reveal yourself as magic-touched, and then whence shall you be? If not executed, King Alexander will take you aside and have you verily dissected.” Steve frowns, and he turns his head.

“What? What do you mean, dissected?”

“You know why this nation is called _Libertas_?” Loki asks softly. “You know the story of its founding?” Loki draws them from the dirt road, and they begin to walk down a grassy footpath, coming slowly down an embankment. Weeds and patches of thorny vine catch at their legs as they pass, but Loki doesn’t seem to notice, and Steve keeps himself right behind him, letting him lead the way.

“No,” Steve says. “There’s—There’s no _story_. King Farese came here in—”

“There’s always a story,” Loki says, cutting through before he can recite what he’s learned from his history books. “Long before King Farese was even a spark in his father’s loins, a witch fled from the great kingdom of Wakanda, the oldest of the four nations upon the continent of Midgard. The witch fled the persecution he faced from his peers, for he had elected to renounce his magic. He had seen the terror and agony that his magic and the magic of others had wrought, and he ran and he ran – he ran through the lands that would become Genosha, and the lands that would one day become Latveria. He ran until he could run no longer, go no farther, and he collapsed upon a copper vein, where the ground was a sweet, minty green from the way the copper reacted with the air. The vein came out in five points – a star – and he decided he would build his kingdom here, and thence would be his capital: _Astrum_ , the capital of _Libertas_ , in the old tongue. Libertas – freedom. Freedom from magic.”

Steve frowns slightly. There’s something quietly meditative about Loki’s tone.

“You say it like you think he had a point.”

“Oh, he had a point,” Loki murmurs lowly. “Magic is ugly, Steven. It is biting, and corrosive, and it is not a tamed wolf beneath its master’s hand – it is a snake that will coil and bite, bite even at its own tail if it is driven too far to madness.” He stares into space for a long few moments, frozen inhumanly still on the path, his eyes shining with grief and pain.

Then he moves again, leading Steve further down the embankment.

“But magic helps people,” Steve murmurs. “It helped me – I’d be dead without it.”

“But there are _prices_ ,” Loki replies, his tone harsh. Steve looks at the back of his head, at the silver in his hair, and at the stiffness of his shoulders beneath his robes and his cloak. “There are always prices to be paid, blood tolls to be taken. You see the way my skin ages and my hair turns silver – you think that is an accident? You think this is merely _age_ , occurring naturally? Nay. Here you see the effect of magic, as the last of my strength ekes from me.”

“Why?” Steve asks quietly. “What happened?” Loki sets his jaw.

 “What happened to your father, Steven?” Steve inhales, gritting his teeth, and he looks Loki in the face, the two of them standing off for a long few moments.

“He got killed,” Steve says finally. “Searching for that artefact he had to get for Strange.” There is quiet, for a long few moments: the only sounds are their footsteps as they move down the embankment, following the grassy path.

“No,” Loki says, and he moves a little faster. Frowning, Steve follows after him, expecting more, but Loki’s tongue stays still in his mouth, and Steve feels a creeping heat of irritation drag over his skin, setting him alight from within. What the Hell is that supposed to mean?

“Tell me,” Steve demands, as Loki comes down to the bank of a stream: with a dancer’s ease and grace, Loki slips from one smooth riverstone to the next, moving across the stream’s expanse without so much as dampening his heels, as if there is a bridge invisibly painted beneath his feet. Steve moves right through the water, knowing that the rocks are more slippery than they look, and he ignores the damp that eats its way into his boots.

“Strange required power for the ritual he used,” Loki says softly. “But he didn’t use his own – he couldn’t use his own, he’s too… Your father volunteered, I expect, said he would gladly give his life for yours, not knowing how his life would _bolster_ yours, more than merely healing your ills. I imagine Strange lied to him, intended as a kindness.” Steve lingers at the other edge of the river, and he stares down at his breeches, soaked through to the knees, and the wet leather of his boots.

“Why are you telling me?” Steve asks, lowly.

“I am not kind,” Loki says, and he leads the way forward, down a well-trodden path. Thick grasses grow around them on all sides, and the path they move through has obviously been walked down a dozen times, although Steve doesn’t know if it’s by Loki, or someone else. Steve shifts his grip on the axe in his hand, shifting the head to rest on his shoulder.

They land in a wide clearing, and they stand on a blanket of daisies and buttercups, the grass vibrantly green. In the very centre of the perfectly round clearing, there’s a tree that Steve doesn’t recognize. The bark is a deep, bloody red colour, and Steve hesitates for a second, then he looks at Loki.

“You can touch it,” he says mildly, as if knowing the question before Steve can ask it. “It won’t hurt you.” The tree is maybe four or five feet across, but despite that, it isn’t all that tall – it can’t be taller than ten or twelve feet, and its branches don’t come that far out from its head, only spreading out a little before curling around slightly.

“It looks strange,” Steve says. “What kind of tree is it?”

“Give me the axe,” Loki says.

“I thought you wanted me to cut it down?”

“No,” Loki says. “I wanted to lecture you, and bringing you with me was a fine excuse.” After a pause, Steve lets out an amused huff, and he shifts the axe from his shoulder, holding it out to Loki. As Loki steps closer, his fingers brush over Steve’s, and Steve feels the cold hardness of his fingers like he did all those years ago, when Loki touched him and put whatever magic he had on Steve’s skin.

 _A blessing,_ he’d said.

They stand for a moment, Loki’s hand touching Steve’s, both of their hands loosely clasped around the axe, and Steve feels himself take a step forward, closing the distance between them, so that the axe is pressed between their chests. Loki radiates cold, and he’s just a little bit shorter than Steve, which— For some reason, it’s surprising, for Loki to feel quite this small next to Steve, and Steve exhales.

“What are you doing?” Loki asks, his tone very quiet, and deliberate.

“Handing you the axe,” Steve murmurs. His fingers tingle where touch Loki’s, and his skin feels electrified, his heart beating a little faster than before in his chest. Loki’s eyes are a deep, shining blue – there’s a coldness to them, an iciness, but the colour isn’t light enough to be called icy; Loki’s face, when he was younger, would probably be called _pretty_. Now, to look at him, there’s a delicate beauty, like there is in marble statues, and the wrinkles around his eyes, around his lips…

They seem to add to it, rather than taking it away.

Loki smiles. His lips are thin, the ring through them twitching as they move, and Steve wonders what they’d feel like under his own, if he kissed him. He’s never kissed anybody before.

Loki pulls back, holding the axe in his two strong hands, and he swings it. It hits the red bark at a perfectly horizontal angle, around five feet up the side of the bark. Fascinated, Steve watches as Loki swings the axe again and again and again, creating a square of axed-out grooves in the wood. The square is so sublimely made, with hard corners and straight lines, that it’s almost as if Loki is using a measure to accomplish it, but… Steve can _see_ him, see the well-practised movements, the speed with which he chips away at the wood.

Once the square is complete, around three square feet across, Loki drags his palm down the very centre of the wood…

And it comes away as one, complete piece.

The inside of the wood is a soft pink, reminding Steve of the colour of raw bacon, and Loki gently sets it aside on the grass, reaching to his belt and drawing a thin dagger. Working it with ease through the pink, young wood beneath the outer park, he draws sap to come forth, and catches it in a thick, glass bottle.

Steve stares at it, enchanted, and takes a slow step forward.

“It’s blue,” he says.

“Yes,” Loki agrees. The sap of the tree is thick and gooey, slowly sliding into the bottle and gathering in its base; it’s a light blue that seems almost violet in the light that filters in from the canopy of trees above them, and it flows freely as Loki draws the dagger away. “You were listening to me, I hope. You must retain the secrecy of your condition.”

“I didn’t mean to make it obvious,” Steve says. “I forgot.”

“I know,” Loki says. “But you must take care, Steven. I would not see you dead of foolishness, when so much has been sacrificed to give you life.” The words feel like they hit Steve in the throat, and he swallows hard, glancing down at his feet. Loki doesn’t seem to notice.

When the bottle is full to the brim with blue slickness, he touches his fingers to the wound he’d made in the tree, and Steve stares as it seems to heal itself under his touch. Loki sways slightly, seeming a little dizzy, and Steve takes a step forward, taking the bottle from him and gently packing it into Loki’s satchel, which he had dropped onto the ground. This satchel, he then slings onto his own shoulder, before he picks up the axe and holds it in his right hand; the thick square of wood he holds under his left arm, like some great volume from the library – it’s heavier than he had expected, and Loki sits on his heels for a few moments, breathing heavily.

“Come on,” Steve says. “I’ll carry everything, and when we get back to the castle, you can sleep.” Loki chuckles softly, and he glances up at Steve, his expression full to the brim with amusement.

“Are you caring for me, Steven?” Loki asks wryly. He makes no movement to get up from where he’s crouched on the ground, and Steve can see his eyes flutter shut for a second, his hand whipping out and spreading on the tree bark to keep himself from falling.

“Loki,” Steve says, trying to keep the concern out of his voice. “I think we should go back now.” Loki exhales shakily, and very slowly, he moves to stand to his feet, his head swaying as if it’s too heavy for his shoulders. “Do you need me to carry you?” Loki laughs weakly, and he presses his face to the wood of the tree.

“No,” Loki mutters, sounding amused, but exhausted. It had come on so suddenly, and Steve wonders how much power it had taken out of him just to heal the wound in the tree, and maybe to separate the bark from the tree… There’s an anxiety low in Steve’s stomach. He doesn’t want to see Loki fall faint onto the ground, doesn’t want to be left with the choice between carrying this stuff back and carrying _Loki_ back toward the city, but Loki steels himself, drawing himself to his full height. “Come,” he says. “Let us forth.”

“You lead the way,” Steve says.

“An order?” Loki queries, and then he laughs again, but he moves ahead of Steve nonetheless, and they begin the walk back over the embankments, and toward the city again.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” Steve mutters, when the city is in sight. Loki’s eyes are closing now and then, and his pale skin is pallid. Loki turns to look at him with perplexity showing on his features, and Steve sets his jaw, trying to draw up his sternest tone, in order to speak with him. “To heal the tree… It’s made you very tired, and very suddenly. If you had gone alone, surely you would have collapsed.”

“You’re a very kind young man,” Loki murmurs, and he gestures for Steve to follow him. Steve follows him to his quarters, to the little wing of the castle that is laid aside for Loki alone. As Loki sinks immediately onto the edge of his bed, Steve sets Loki’s satchel upon the side table that rests at the edge of his laboratory, and he removes the bottle of blue sap and sets that separate to the bag. The bark of wood, he isn’t sure what to do with, but then he sets it down on the broad table in the centre of the laboratory – he uses this table, Steve is vaguely aware, not only for his alchemy and his experiments, but also for his meals. The axe, for the time being, he rests in the corner of the room.

Loki is watching him.

“You will be careful?” Loki asks. “You will be cognizant of your own enhanced strength?”

“Yes, sir,” Steve promises, and he takes a step forward, closer, until he is looking down at Loki. Loki stares at the laced jerkin of Steve’s shirt, and then his eyes shift upward toward Steve’s face.

Steve sinks to his knees.

“No,” Loki says, but he says it with a reluctance, a hunger, that makes Steve’s heart skip a beat.

“Yes,” he says, and his hands go to the lacing of Loki’s left boot. Loki exhales so hard that it’s almost a soft moan, the sound stretched taut between relief and frustration, and Steve can’t help the heady flush that comes to his cheeks as he carefully unlaces the leather binding and pulls it from Loki’s foot. Loki’s stocking is one of the most delicate-looking things Steve has ever seen – the green fabric is so gossamer-thin that he could believe it was woven from spider’s silk, and he can see the lines of Loki’s foot beneath it, see the black polish on his toenails. There’s an ugly scar through the very middle of it, and Steve looks at it as he begins to undo the lacing on the other side. “How did this happen?” he asks.

“Childhood folly,” Loki answers breathlessly. He’s looking down at Steve with a desperate want in his eyes, and although Steve knows that it’s probably partly exhaustion, his skin still feels hot, his body eager. He wants to know what it would be like to arch up from the floor and capture Loki’s mouth under his own, to pin him back onto the bed and kiss him hard, to feel the coldness of his skin and the coldness of the piercing on his lip, too, to _feel_ him… “My brother fell into a trap, arse first, and was pierced badly by the trap’s base – I followed him, heedless of our party’s warnings, and my foot was wrenched by a spike.”

“Jeeze,” Steve says, and Loki laughs, falling back onto the bed. His knees spread slightly, and Steve glances at the skirt of his robes. If he could just push them up, toward Loki’s thighs—

Turning his gaze back to the boot, he sets that aside too, and very gently, he puts his hands underneath the backs of Loki’s ankles, lifting his legs up onto the bed. Scooping the witch up and finding him surprisingly heavy for his thin frame, he sets Loki down with his head upon the pillow, and before he can pull away, Loki’s hand is cupping his cheek. The skin of his palm is cold, and Steve lets himself press into it, feel it like a relief against his hot-flushed skin.

Loki’s cold gaze is focused on Steve’s lips.

“You could kiss me,” Steve says, his voice a little choked in the middle. “I wouldn’t, um. I wouldn’t mind.”

“Wouldn’t you?” Loki asks, and his breath whispers over Steve’s lips as he leans closer like a winter’s breeze: it smells like fresh frost. Steve’s always loved that smell.

“No,” Steve says, and Loki clutches his cheek a little tighter, pulling Steve in, and Steve feels the electric thrill run through his entire body, the desperate desire to be closer, to close that gap between them entirely and feel his mouth on Loki’s, to pin him back against the bed and—

Loki’s other hand comes between their faces, his fingers against Steve’s lips, and his eyes are suddenly wide awake, missing the tired flutter they’d had a moment ago. He looks— Steve isn’t sure what to make of the expression on his face, the desperation in his eyes or the parting of his lips, and yet his eyes are just a fraction too wide, as if he’s frightened of something. But he couldn’t possibly be frightened of _Steve_ , could he?

“You should go,” Loki says. His fingers are hard as stone, but they feel soft and delicate against Steve’s lips, and Steve can feel his skin tingling at the sensation.

“I don’t want to,” Steve says.

“You ought,” Loki murmurs, plaintive, in the tone of someone begging him to stay. “Please.”

 “Okay,” Steve says reluctantly, and he leans back on his heels. Laid on his back, his head against pillows of the thick, downy sheets, Loki looks ill, and Steve hesitates as he looks between Loki and the door that leads out into the wider part of the palace, but then he reaches for the shelf and takes down one of the woollen blankets Loki has neatly folded there. Shaking it out, he throws it over Loki’s body, and he sees Loki smile weakly. “Do you need me to get you something to eat, or some water?” Steve asks.

Inexplicably, there’s a sensation of guilt burning in his chest. It’s not the end of the world, that Loki won’t kiss him. He doesn’t feel _hurt_ , or like he might start crying, or like it’s the worst thing that’s ever happened, but—

Loki’s eyes droop closed, and he sinks back onto the pillow.

“No,” he says. “I require only repose, and I will soon recover.”

“What’s wrong with you?” Steve asks. “This— This doesn’t happen to most witches, does it? I’ve never heard of it making you… Making somebody so sick, so tired. Are you going to die?”

“We will all die, Steven,” Loki says, slurring the words slightly. His hair is spread out on the bed around him, and he looks like a sleeping prince in some tale of myth. Just looking at him, Steve feels an odd sense of distance, as if he’s looking at something forbidden, or at something painted on canvas, not real and breathing and in front of him.

“Comforting thought,” Steve says tonelessly, and he pushes the door into the corridor open, stepping out into the main part of the castle.

❅ ✪ ❅ ✪ ❅ ✪ ❅

Steve fakes exhaustion in that day’s training. He runs slower in the full plate armour than he had before, and he concentrates on the loud, heavy clink of the plates against each other, imagines it’s a thousand times heavier, like it’s truly weighing him down.

“Must have been the excitement the first time,” Fury says, shrugging his shoulders as he looks at Steve. Steve is hunkered down on the bench, drinking heavily from a water skein, and he glances at Fury uncertainly, but Fury doesn’t seem annoyed or especially surprised – maybe a little disappointed, but that’s all. “Good to see what you’re capable of, though – we can work ourselves up to running that fast over time. Sound good?”

“Yes, sir,” Steve says, nodding his head.

“At least I don’t have to set up different regimens for you and Sam,” Fury murmurs, lip twitching in amusement. “God knows I ain’t got the time for that.”

“Plus, I’ll be a better knight than him anyway,” Sam wheezes out as he skids to a stop, and Steve arches an eyebrow at him.

“Oh, yeah?” Steve asks, sceptically. He can’t keep the grin off his face. “How’d you figure that?”

“Better cheekbones,” Sam says. “They’ll be able to put my face on my crest.” Steve laughs, and Fury shoves him in the shoulder, making Sam beam and look up at Fury with a glint in his eye. “What, you don’t agree?”

“Shut the Hell up, both of you,” Fury says, shaking his head. “Go do some real work.” Sam and Steve share a glance, and then they grin, both getting to their feet and helping each other pull off their armour, getting back into their clothes so they can head to work as squires again. There’s a certain amount of time allotted for their training a few days each week, but there’s no excuse not to get their work done, on any given day.

When they move inside, Sam heads off in search of Lady Romanov, and Steve takes a quick dip into the antechamber that adjoins the throne room – there’s a corkboard in here where knights put up notes if they need particular help from a squire on any given day, somewhere out in the city or the surrounding area, and if not, he’ll head out to the grounds and ask who needs a hand.

Steve freezes in the doorway, his lips parting.

Pinned against the wall is Loki, and the king has his hands up above his head, their mouths together but not quite touching. Loki has a look of mild fear on his face, uncertainty showing in his body language and in the way he tries to cram himself tightly against the wall, as if it might stop him from touching King Alexander—

Whose thigh is pressed tight between Loki’s legs, shoving up the fabric of his robes and forcing it to bunch around his crotch. Loki is gasping out little noises, and the king is moving his leg just slightly, forcing Loki to grind down against it.

Steve feels sick.

“Let me go,” Loki whispers.

“Oh, I’m, uh, I’m not sure I want to do that, sweetheart,” the king murmurs against his mouth, and he leans in closer, so that their lips almost touch. Steve scrambles back out of the room: he makes enough noise that even as he leaves, he scuffs his boot on the ground, and the king drops Loki out of sudden surprise.

As Steve busies himself with adjusting the tie on a curtain in the corridor, he sees Loki walking down the corridor toward him. A sickly lilac blush is heavy in his cheeks, but he doesn’t look sick or exhausted, like he had yesterday. He walks with his head high, his gait slow and confident.

“Sorry,” Steve mumbles as Loki stops before him, his hands loosely clasped before his stomach.

“Take care that you knock before entering any hall of the throne,” Loki instructs cleanly. “Even the servants’ halls dedicated to the throne’s service.” Shame burns in Steve’s cheeks, and he looks at Loki’s politely commanding expression.

“Yes, sir,” Steve says. “Can I— Is there, um, anything I can help you with today?”

“No,” Loki says. “Go outside, make yourself scarce. Sirs Rumlow and Rollins are soon to be abroad again; you might help them prepare their travelling gear. Go forth to the stables.” Steve hesitates, waiting to see if he says anything else, but Loki says naught, merely looking at Steve expectantly…

“Yes, sir,” Steve repeats, slowly.

For a long moment, they stand like that, looking at one another, and then Loki steps away. Steve watches him as he makes his way down the corridor, his hips swaying, the skirts of his robes shifting around his ankles, and his mouth feels completely dry.

“Rogers,” comes a sharp voice, and Steve twists his head around to look at the king, who stands tall, his chin raised. Immediately, Steve bows his head low, not looking directly at King Alexander’s face, and the king says, “Give a wide berth to Loki. Never trust him.” For some reason, the words burn where they come to his ears – his mom had said just the same thing, but coming from the king, it startles him, makes him want to lash out, to lay a hand on the monarch that has undoubtedly been his salvation.

“Yes, your majesty,” Steve says, and he doesn’t look up again until he hears the king turn the corridor’s corner.


	3. Chapter 3

“Hey, Rogers,” Rumlow says as Steve comes down between the stalls in the stables. He and Rollins are each packing neatly parcelled rations into their saddlebags, making use of the long, wooden table that is pressed against the edge of the open barn space at the end of the stables, where horses are groomed and saddled, and where hay bales are stacked like bricks against the westside wall. “What do you need?”

“His majesty’s physician sent me,” Steve says, looking between Rollins and Rumlow both, and taking in their garb. Instead of their full-plate, they each wear travelling cloaks over light, leather armour – the sort of thing any ardent traveller might wear without rousing suspicion. Leggings, a light leather vest, studded gloves and boots… Their mission, he would assume, calls for stealth more than title.

“Did he now?” Rollins asks, a dirty smirk that Steve doesn’t like the look of pulling at his face. It’s lascivious, that smirk. “Take over for me packing these, would you?”

“Sure,” Steve says, and he trades places with Rollins, continuing to neatly pack the rations, which are mostly dry goods – nuts, unleavened bread, hard cheeses – and setting them neatly into the saddlebag, as he had been taught to do years before. “You want me to saddle your horses?”

“Please,” Rumlow says, and Steve catches him shooting Rollins a look, as if pushing him to do something, nudging him, his eyebrows waggling. Rumlow is politer than Rollins, who almost never says “please” or “thank you” to any of the squires or the actual servants, but Steve usually puts this up to him having been born a nobleman, whereas Rumlow was once a peasant boy in the city. He’d won his chance at a knighthood in a melee tournament when he was Steve’s age, according to Knight Commander Fury, and well-remembers his roots. He’s popular, too, amongst the other knights and with many of the staff in the castle – Rumlow is charismatic and charming, and he’s always treated Steve well, over the past few years. “He talk to you often?”

“Who, sir?” Steve asks. He doesn’t look away from the saddlebags, instead focused on his duties.

“His majesty’s physician,” Rumlow replies smoothly. “ _Loki_.” There is some secret emphasis on the name that Steve doesn’t like, and he turns his head to look at the two knights. Rollins and Rumlow are stood shoulder to shoulder, both of them with their eyes on him, and Steve shrugs his shoulders, forcing his gaze back to the saddlebags.

“Not really,” he answers.

“I hear he took you out to the woods yesterday,” Rollins says. For a long second, the question hangs in the air, and while Steve doesn’t understand the significance of it, he knows that Rollins has an excited, amused note to his voice, and… Do they know, Steve wonders, about the king and Loki? Is there something revealing about the way that Steve looks at him, that he might want to kiss Loki himself? It doesn’t matter to Steve, what they might say to _him_ , but if he were to say something revealing about Loki… What might happen to him? At the hands of these knights, or the king himself?

“He’s old, and infirm,” Steve replies, forcing himself to shrug his shoulders again. “He needed me to carry the axe for him, and cut some bark off a tree for medicine. I carried his bag on the way back.”

“Oh,” Rollins says, and he sounds disappointed. Good. Focusing on the saddlebag, Steve packs the last of the rations away, and then he moves to the edge of the room and picks up one of the saddles from where it’s stacked on the shelf, holding it at his hip as he moves in toward the stallion that belongs to Rumlow – Fortas. He’s a calm horse and he looks at Steve with deep, dark eyes as Steve reaches out and brushes his palm over the animal’s nose, stroking up the curve of his muzzle and gently touching the tuft of hair on the top of his head. Then, Steve moves closer, beginning to saddle him up.

“Why do you ask?” Steve asks casually, patting Fortas’ side gently. “Man seems kinda weird.” Rumlow leans on the edge of the stable wall, his elbows against the wooden surface, and he watches Steve for a few moments, taking him in. Rumlow… Rumlow is handsome. Steve is aware of it, is aware of how handsome he is, although he knows—

It isn’t as if it’s _illegal_ , to lie with another man.

Steve knows that.

It isn’t illegal. You can lie with other men, but it isn’t done, not… Not in the public eye. It’s a fetish, a filthy thing, something strange that some people do together in the dark. It’s certainly not something a knight of the court could be caught doing and get away with, even were it happening behind closed doors.

“He’s weird,” Rumlow agrees, his voice a quiet rumble. Steve adjusts the straps on the saddle, tightening it across the horse’s middle, and then he brushes his fingers against the horse’s hair, petting him gently. “Although the king says he’s an admirable physician.”

“When I first started as a squire, Knight Commander Fury had me ride out to see him, one day in winter,” Steve says. He doesn’t know if they know already, that it was him who rode out to fetch the balm that Loki brewed, but he figures it’s best to mention it now, so it doesn’t seem like he’s hiding something from them, something potentially intimate, just in case they _do_ suspect… What? “He lived in a windmill, when he lived in Thorston. Alone, outside of the town, as if he talked to nobody.”

“Who needs talk?” Rollins says dryly, again with the lascivious tone, and Steve turns to glance at him. Something must show in Steve’s expression, in the furrow of his brow or the set of his mouth, because Rumlow huffs out a noise and shoves him in the shoulder.

“Ignore him,” Rumlow says, shaking his head. “He’s spreading gossip. Lacks anything better to do.”

“ _I heard_ ,” Rollins says, his lips twitching in amusement, “that our good healer has been caught looking through the windows of the brothel near Lavender Square, _hungrily_. I bet he thirsts for, uh, _something_.”

“Oh, shut up,” Rumlow says, but he laughs as he says it, and Steve looks back to the horse, feeling a muscle twitch in his jaw. There’s something that seems off about that to him, the idea of Loki looking in a brothel – Steve’s never seen him look at anybody with anything _like_ desire. Steve’s watched him walk through the halls of the palace, or through the streets in the city – he walks like a _monk_ , his head held high, but his eyes downward, his hands clasped before his belly. He speaks quietly to other people, rarely encourages anybody to say a word to him if he doesn’t speak first, and he doesn’t look at strangers at all, let alone look at them… _Hungrily_ , Rollins said. It sounds like nothing but hearsay, some stupid thing Rollins is saying just to amuse himself. Gossip, like Rumlow said. “He’s pretty. Don’t you think, Steve?”

“He’s a man,” Steve replies dryly, and Rumlow laughs.

“He’s pretty for a man,” Rumlow says. There’s something in his tone, something uncomfortable: it isn’t exactly like Rollins’, isn’t dirty in the same way, but there is something slightly wanting in it, something that makes Steve’s stomach feel rough and tumultuous.

“I wouldn’t know,” Steve says. His voice is tightly controlled, but polite. Rumlow and Rollins both quiet themselves for a minute, and then he hears their boots move quietly over the dirt floor of the stable, back toward the main part of the barn.

Steve exhales shakily, and he draws out the process of fixing up Fortas’ saddle.

❅ ✪ ❅ ✪ ❅ ✪ ❅

Steve sits in the corner of Loki’s laboratory, sitting up on the table at the side of the room. His shoulders are aching after the day’s labour – Knight Commander Fury had had him and Sam doing push-ups nearly the whole day, and even when Fury had stopped him, citing a limit Steve hadn’t reached yet, but had to pretend to, Steve had made use of the fact that the rest of his day was free – he’d kept going with the push-ups in the privacy of his own home, until he couldn’t do _any more_.

He’d lost count of them, but he knows it was hundreds.

Loki has carved the square of bark into a disc, and now he sits on a high stool beside the table, bringing a piece of sandpaper back and forth over the bark in smooth, slow movements. Shavings of red wood come away and settle on the table, and it’s almost hypnotic to watch him work, to watch the movements of his left hand over the wood.

“Is that your main hand?” Steve asks.

“My dominant hand, yes,” Loki says. “Why are you here?”

They have sat in silence for some two or three hours, ever since Steve finished his lunch and came into Loki’s quarters instead of going anywhere else. The library is closed off today, because some damned squirrel or something had managed to work its way behind some of the shelves, and although Steve had offered to lend a hand, Sir Barton, the knight in charge of the servants trying to flush the thing out, had shook him off. Barton had insisted it was his day off, and that he wouldn’t let Steve come and do some extra work.

And, well, that’s kind of all Steve does.

He exercises, he goes to the library, he works.

He draws sometimes, but at the moment, every sketch book he has just seems to be drawings of Loki, sketches of him kneeling where he works on the herb garden in the palace grounds; pouring over a book at a lectern in the throne room; at the shoulder of the king, who’s always faceless, when Steve draws him. Just a crown on a faceless head.

“I don’t know,” Steve says. “I like watching you work.” Loki’s hand stops midway through a movement, and his eyes deliberately flicker up from the disc of red wood, landing on Steve’s face. He looks at him seriously, his blue eyes focused, his eyebrows slightly furrowed. Then, he turns back to the wood, and begins sanding it again.

He’s making it thinnest toward the edges, and thicker in the centre: it’s slightly convex, with an easy, natural-looking curve, and already the outer edge of it looks smooth to the touch, almost like smithed metal.

“What are you making?” Steve asks.

“The shavings from the wood, I will keep in a bottle. The tincture I make of them will be used to bolster the king’s strength, as he has requested of me.” It isn’t what Steve asked, but it’s still an answer.  Steve looks from the numerous shavings spread on the table, some of them piling up in places, to the various bottles and jars that are stacked on the shelves. Some of them are filled with dried leaves and petals, bulbs and seeds; others are filled with liquids or tinctures; others still, Steve thinks, have organs in them. One jar he vaguely recognizes from a labelled jar Stephen Strange had had in the ritual hall he’d fixed Steve in – bezoars, hard little stones Steve knows come from goats. But some of them have other things… Desiccated hearts; kidneys suspended in clear fluid; strips of flesh that is green at the edges, and Steve isn’t sure what _that_ is.

“Is that magic?” Steve asks. “Or… or is it just medicine?”

“A complicated question,” Loki says smoothly. His hair is tied in a loose bun that comes back from his head, but several strands of hair hang limply around his face, past his temples and his cheeks, shifting to frame it differently as he moves back and forth over the wood. The tunic he’s wearing is something else, the green collar high and tight against the shape of his long, slender neck, but with a V cut sharply into the stiff fabric that comes right down to the hollow of his collar bones, baring it to the air. At the edges of the fabric, Steve can just spy the shadow of the lightning scars that he knows are all over Loki’s skin. “Some medicines work by adjusting the chemical balance within the body – enabling the natural defence mechanisms of the body to heal itself of poisoning, or perhaps to press upon some organs or muscles to be fortified, more efficient… That is _just medicine_ , as you say. Of course, there are drawbacks to this approach: _just medicine_ is different from species to species, and even from individual to individual. _Just medicine_ , if an individual’s tolerance is very low, might even poison them. I am confident in my own medicine, but it is a delicate art, and takes many years to master.

“Magic,” Loki continues, as he sets the sandpaper on the side, and then picks up the disc of wood, blowing air over the wood. Steve stares as it comes away from the wood, and then seems to hit some invisible wall, landing directly down on the surface of the table instead of drifting onto the floor. Not even a speck of wood shaving has landed on the floor. “The use of active magic, to channel that natural power of the universe through one’s body, to reshape it as one might… That is toxic to the body.”

 “Every body?” Steve presses.

“Every body,” Loki says. “In a way.”

“What does that mean?” Loki chuckles, and he takes up the disc of wood, momentarily setting it on another table before taking up a very clean brush and a bowl, but before he can start sweeping the shavings off the table, Steve pushes himself off the counter, reaching for the brush and taking it from his hand. Loki lets him, and as Steve neatly brushes all the little shavings into the bowl, he can smell them: the dry, earthy scent of the bark comes thick into his nostrils.

“Why, Steven? Do you plan to become a witch?” he asks, his tone teasing, and then he takes up a bottle made of glass, which is stoppered with silver. Pouring a little of the golden oil inside onto a rag, he sits down again, beginning to move it in circles on the disc of wood. The oil shimmers where it’s rubbed into place, and the wood itself looks almost entirely smooth, the oil lingering on it like a varnish, seeming to dry as it’s rubbed into place.

“You say mysterious things, and then act like I’m stupid for being curious,” Steve says dryly, and Loki laughs.

“I suppose I do.” Steve holds up the bowl of wood shavings, and Loki nods to a square bottle on the corner counter, which already has a wooden funnel sticking out of it. Steve moves toward it, brushing all the shavings out of the bowl and into the funnel, and he taps it against the mouth of the bottle a few times, making sure all of the fragments of wood settle into place. They fill the bottle up nearly three-quarters of the way, and he sets the funnel down, corking the bottle neatly. “When medicine is made with magical properties, it isn’t the same as channelling magic itself through the body. Magic itself is an energy, a current; when one uses magical ingredients, however, that power is latent. It’s already moved through the plant or those ingredients, leaving its effects behind, and then those effects can help one heal, or bolster one’s strength, et cetera. Think of it as the pattern a wave leaves upon the sand – one makes use of what the wave leaves behind, and not the wave itself. And equally, if we think of ourselves as the sand, when we utilize magic, so too is magic the wave: it brushes over us, leaving its mark on us, and when the wave runs out, ever more so as the tide retreats, it takes part of us with it. Magic corrodes.”

“Listening to you feels the same as reading a book in the library,” Steve says, running a hand through his hair, and he takes up the bottle of wood shavings and places it neatly in a gap on Loki’s shelves, between the bezoars and a jar of what looks like dried mushrooms. “I want to do it, but for every paragraph, I feel like I need to read twenty more to understand it.”

“A thirst for knowledge,” Loki says approvingly. “A dangerous thing.”

“You like dangerous things,” Steve says. It doesn’t sound like an accusation, even though he means it as one: he can hear it in his own ears, but it just sounds like a statement of fact.

“Do I?” Loki asks. All of a sudden, he is across the room, and Steve is pressed back against the wooden counter, Loki’s hands pinning him in place, clutching at the wood either side of his hips. Their chests brush against one another, and Loki is staring at Steve not with desire, or want, but with a desperate curiosity, an apparent fascination. “Do you?”

“I don’t know,” Steve says. His heart is beating a little faster in his chest, and he can feel the heat rushing over his skin, feel the warmth in his own cheeks. “Rollins says you were looking in the brothel by Lavender Square.”

“Did he now?” Loki says softly. “What else did Rollins say?”

“He asked why you took me out to the woods. He was disappointed when I said you were an old man, and that you needed me to carry your stuff back for you.” Loki’s lips twitch, but he doesn’t seem offended or angry, or even surprised. Steve’s shoulders are still aching from the push-ups, but he still wonders, for a second, if he’d be able to lift Loki up, get Loki’s legs around his waist, pin him up against the wall. The thought comes to him fully-formed – he’s seen people having sex, spotted tavern girls or women in alleys, but he’s never touched a woman, or a man.

“Why did he wish I took you out to the woods, Steven?” Loki asks in a slow, quiet voice, and his lips are close enough to Steve’s that Steve can’t even see them: all he can see are Loki’s eyes, bright blue, and he can smell Loki himself. He can smell dried flowers, a kind of fragrant sweetness that clings to his clothes, as well as mint; he smells soap weed and rosemary; and best of all, he smells fresh frost, that signature scent that seems to come right from Loki’s core.

“Why didn’t you go into the brothel?” Steve asks. “If you wanted to?”

“I didn’t want to,” Loki says.

“You were looking.”

“I was hungry.”

“Not hungry enough.” Loki huffs out an amused noise, and then he takes a step back from Steve, and he sets the disc of wood down on the table.

“It’s a shield,” Loki says mildly, looking down at it with a thoughtful expression on his face. “For you, when you finish your training.” Steve’s mouth falls open, and he stares at the varnished wood, at the way it shines in the light. The golden oil, the varnish, has done something to the colour again – although it had seemed more pink as Loki had shaved away the rough parts, as the varnish sinks in, the red colour deepens. It’s as red as blood.

“Really?” Steve asks.

“Mmm,” Loki hums. “Go away, Steven. Take a walk, perhaps, if they still won’t let you into your precious library. You might pursue some art – paint, or sketch, some flowers, some trees. While the spring yet lasts, and still do they bloom.”

“Is it really for me?” Steve asks, quietly. He looks at the shield where it rests on the table, and the bloody colour seems to darken before his eyes, shining slightly in the light as the varnish sinks in.

“If you survive,” Loki says. “Not everyone does live through their knight’s training, you know.”

“Why?” Steve asks. _Never trust him_. The words echo in his head, his mother’s voice and the king’s voice and his own voice seeming to ring on the inside of his skull, imbued with some strange, effervescent tonality that he doesn’t think would be possible if the words were being said for real. Not without magic, anyway.

 “It’s very dangerous.”

“I meant—” Loki is smiling at him, the tiniest curve of his lips. Steve looks at him, and he doesn’t bother to finish the sentence, crossing his arms over his chest. “Was the king forcing you? To…” Loki’s smile remains on his lips, but his eyes soften – there’s something less performative about the shine in his eyes, maybe. Something like that. “Everybody says not to trust you.”

“Oh, don’t trust me,” Loki agrees, very seriously. “Never trust me.”

“You’re damn frustrating,” Steve says. “You know that?”

“I’ve often been told. Go away.”

“Fine,” Steve murmurs. “I’ll go sketch some flowers.”

“Good man,” Loki murmurs, and Steve feels his gaze on his back as he makes his way out into the corridor, and out of Loki’s quarters. Rollins and Rumlow are gone, now – they’d ridden out late last night, or very early this morning, without ceremony. Steve had heard them pass the barracks when everyone else was asleep, had heard them telling jokes to each other as they’d ridden out from the stables.

He doesn’t sketch any flowers as he walks outside the city gates, and moves slowly through the woods. He tries, a few times – moves his pencil over the page and makes the shapes of the stems, the heads of the flowers, or individual petals.

The only finished sketches are of himself, with a round shield on his arm, and Loki stood at his shoulder.

❅ ✪ ❅ ✪ ❅ ✪ ❅

“Shield high,” Fury barks out, and Steve shifts the way he holds the strap on his arm. Sam had said, after he’d finished his introduction to using the shield, that it had felt weird and unnatural at first, to have one arm pinned instead of having one free. He’d gotten more used to it, after he’d had worked with it for an hour or so. For Steve, it doesn’t feel unnatural. The shield is maybe the wrong weight for him, he thinks – it’s a little too heavy, and he doesn’t like how it’s heavier at the base than at the top rather than having the weight evenly distributed across the shape of the crest, but it feels _right_ , to have a shield on his arm like this. He likes it.

Had Loki known he’d like having a shield, somehow?

“Block. Block again. Block— You’re a natural with a shield, Rogers!” Fury says as the mace slams hard against the centre of the shield’s crest, making an almighty clang ring out in the room.

“Yeah, well, Wilson can _flirt_. I’d trade this for that,” Steve replies, and Fury laughs. Fury doesn’t warn him with the hits, this time, but Steve moves reflexively, raising the shield high, then low, then shifting it so that Fury’s blow glances off, and Steve shifts forward, so that they’re boot to boot, Steve’s sword against Fury’s breast.

For a second, they’re frozen, and then a small grin comes onto Fury’s face, his eyepatch shifting as his eyes crinkle.

“Wilson’s good with girls,” Fury says, brushing Steve’s sword down, and Steve drops it, holding it loosely against his side, the shield on the other. “But part of that is that he _talks_ to them, Rogers. Have you ever talked to a woman?” Steve hesitates, and then he huffs out an amused breath, looking down at the grass.

“Can we go again?” he asks, and Fury looks at him for a long moment.

“You ever do anything _other_ than work?”

“Sure,” Steve says. “I read in the library.”

“You _study_ in the library,” Fury says. “You ever, I don’t know, good off with the guys? Go out with the knights, or the other squires? Drink?” Ale doesn’t do anything to Steve. He’d drunk half a barrel, once, just to see if it _would_ do anything… And it hadn’t. It’s the magic in his veins, he thinks.

He’s the sand, he thinks, and the tide’s gone out forever.

He hopes.

“Does it matter?” Steve asks, helplessly. Fury rolls his eye, and he adjusts the mace in his hand again.

 _“Left!”_ Fury barks, and Steve jumps to action.

❅ ✪ ❅ ✪ ❅ ✪ ❅

That night, they go out to a tavern right on the edge of town. A group of travellers are in from Ferrum, a city-state some ways to the south, ruled over by King Howard. He’s getting older, now, and some of the knights have said they think his son will take over the kingdom soon – Anthony, his name is.

One of them is a knight, still wearing her plate armour even as she leans back in her seat as the other travellers eat and drink. There’s an older man, a funny man with warm eyes named Erskine, a healer under a light travelling tunic that keeps complaining, good-naturedly, about the heat; there’s a woman in a squire’s uniform, her blonde hair tied back from her face; there’s a few guys that are laughing back and forth, wearing light armour… Maybe they’re knights, too. Steve doesn’t know.

“You’re watching us very closely,” says the knight, and Steve turns to look at her. His plate stands empty on the table in front of him, long-since finished, and he’s been looking at them too closely, watching them too obviously. Her accent is clipped and controlled, different to the accents of Libertans or Ferrans.

“Sorry,” Steve says. “You’re hard not to look at.” The knight raises an eyebrow, crossing her arms over her chest with a quiet clink of sound, and Steve looks her in the face, at her dark eyes and her dark, wavy hair. She’s in her late forties or fifties, Steve would guess, at a glance – maybe a little bit older than Knight Commander Fury.

“Oh?” she asks “Why is that?” Her accent is a little like Loki’s, actually – not exactly the same, but similar. _Foreign_. He likes it. He likes how controlled it sounds, when she talks, how educated.

“You’re beautiful,” Steve says.

“You’re a _baby_ ,” she replies immediately, but her wax-painted lips shift into a little grin, and she glances to the table: they all laugh, looking at Steve, and Steve feels himself flush with sudden embarrassment, looking down toward the table surface. It’s stupid of him, to be—

 _Shy_.

He really _doesn’t_ know how to talk to women. _You’re beautiful_ , he realises, just sounds… A bit much. Way too much.

“I’m not a—” Steve says, but she’s already moving, dropping to sit down in the seat across from him instead of at the table with the other Ferrans, and Steve looks across the table at her, his lips parted. “Oh.”

“Go on,” the knight says. “I’m sure you had more of a speech prepared than _you’re beautiful_.”

“No, not really,” Steve admits. “That was as far as I got.” She laughs, and she puts her hand on her chin, looking at him thoughtfully – although she’s still wearing her armour, she’s taken off her helmet and her gauntlets, and her hands are petite, but strong. She’s quite petite, in general – she’s only a little bit shorter than Lady Romanov. “The other squires are good at talking to— I’m not.”

“Have you ever tried before?”

“No. First time.”

“Then you’re not _so_ terrible,” she says, and she puts out her right hand, her elbow resting on the table. He hesitates, then moves to shake it, and she clucks her tongue at him. “No, no. Elbow on the table. Palms together, thumbs crossed.” Steve laughs a little.

“You want to arm wrestle?”

“If you can beat me, I’ll give you another shot,” she says. “See if you get lucky this time.” Steve sets his elbow on the table, pushing his empty plate aside, and presses their palms together, putting themselves in position.

“What’s your name?” Steve asks.

“Margaret,” she says.

“I’m Steve.” He hesitates, for a second, and then says, “You don’t… You don’t look like a Margaret.” She grins, showing her teeth, and she chuckles, squeezing his hand. Her fingers are so slender, compared to his, her palm smaller, but he can feel how strong her hands are, and feel the callouses on her palms, from handling weaponry.

“Peggy,” she amends. “Knight Commander Carter, if you want to be formal about it.”

“Knight Commander Carter,” Steve says appraisingly, giving a nod of his head. “Yeah, that— I don’t know, I like that. Formality.” Peggy chuckles, and she drums her the fingers of her other hand on the edge of the table.

“Alright, then,” she says. “Let’s go, Steve.”

**Author's Note:**

> [Hit me up on Tumblr](http://dictionarywrites.tumblr.com/faq). Requests always open.


End file.
